Skynet”¦umm, I mean Google, has added a new search protocol called “Google Print” to its already impressive arsenal.
What does “Google Print” do? Oh, not much, really. It merely boasts the capability of searching the complete text of over 10,000 books. Oh, and when your search results are returned it provides you with a scanned image of the book page where your result is located. G.P. also offers you the opportunity to purchase the book from Amazon. Go here to read the New York Times story about it, or go here for Google’s instruction page on how to use the new search engine.
The search engine should provide hours of unproductive fun. Most of my favorite books are already catalogued. It’s pretty entertaining to try and remember cool passages to type in and locate within the book”¦and yes I realize how nerdy that sounds. I came out of the nerd-closet a long time ago.
Apparently, several publishers are fairly pissed off about this and have demanded Google obtain copyright permission before scanning the pages of their books. Google claims that since they only allow the user to view one page at a time they haven’t breached any copyright laws. The publishers disagreed and stomped their feet, and in response Google laughed at the silly humans and continued to consume the cultural artifacts of humanity.